


Hope whispers and I will follow

by captainofthegreenpeas



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Bittersweet, Canon What Canon, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Mollcroft, Molly is her confident S4 self here, Romance, based on prompt by recipient, not sure i did this concept justice but i dont have the energy to make it a multi chapter story, the less said about canon the better, was this a remake of Sherlock Beauty and the Beaust and Jane Eyre? Maaaaaaaybe, with a side helping of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-04-06
Packaged: 2021-03-01 20:29:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23513161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainofthegreenpeas/pseuds/captainofthegreenpeas
Summary: Molly Hooper runs a clinic for the depressed, funded by an anonymous benefactor. When her house burns down, she receives an offer of hospitality from the mysterious brother of her best friend.
Relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Molly Hooper
Comments: 4
Kudos: 25





	Hope whispers and I will follow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eliza_doolittlethings](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eliza_doolittlethings/gifts).



> I should probably have told you I accepted your request, but I thought it best not to get your hopes up just in case I didn’t finish it. I hope this pleases! Title taken from the song Winter's Light.

The trouble began with the toaster.   
Molly arrived at work hungry and frazzled; and Lady Luck gave her the silent treatment for the rest of the day. Everything timed itself to arrive either too early or too late (mostly the latter), and when she could no longer ignore the burn on her hand she had to sacrifice her lunch break to keep it in cold water. Her patients were uncooperative at best and hostile at worst.   
“I don’t have a _problem_ ,” a patient said even as he wept. “I can’t need pills, I’m fine!”  
 _I just need to go home and put my feet up_ she told herself. She reminded herself that this was nobody’s fault- that bad days fall upon everyone, and that she shouldn’t take other people’s depression personally- and that tomorrow she’d have better luck, nicer patients, and the supplies that were supposed to have arrived at the clinic by now. 

As if the universe had been reading her thoughts, or sensed that all she could think about was home and her sofa and her cat, Molly walked down her street at six thirty to discover that no, nothing at all that she wanted would happen today. There would be no sofa. Or home.

  
“Toby!” she yelled as she pushed through the onlookers to where the firemen were blasting hoses at the glowing cinder that was once her house.

“Excuse me, are you the owner of this house?”

“My cat, where’s my cat, is he safe?”

  
“We rescued this cat from the building, is he yours?”

  
“Oh god,” Molly whispered as she buried her face in his fur. Someone behind her put an orange blanket around her shoulders. She was shivering with panic and grief, but her head was clear enough for her to agree to answer questions.  
“I don’t know how the fire could have started, I’ve been at work all day, I always switch everything off before I leave the house, I don’t even _have_ a tumble dryer-“ tears began to fall when she saw her neighbours coming back from work, their hands over their mouths in shock and sympathy. 

  
A woman with rich dark brown hair slipped easily through the crowd of emergency service workers, acknowledged with a nod from the leader of the team.   
“I am instructed to give you this,” she said to Molly, holding out a letter and a letter opener. In spite of the disaster, or perhaps because of it, Molly found herself laughing nervously as she lowered Toby to the ground, where he wound himself shyly around her legs.  
“I lost my house, not my fingers,” she couldn’t resist pointing out as she sliced open the letter. 

  
_My dear Miss Hooper_   
_My condolences for the loss of your house in this afternoon’s fire. If my calculations are correct, the fire leaves you without a residence or possessions. Because of this, I wish for you to join me at Musgrave Hall, my ancestral home. You will be my honoured guest, from today until you have found your feet._   
_PS. I will also tolerate the presence of your cat._

  
“Definitely not.” Molly told the woman. “Sorry, what’s your name?”  
“Anthea. Shall I tell him you need some time to think it over?”  
“No, I’ve made up my mind. I’ll make my own arrangements, thank you.” Molly handed back the letter and letter opener. Surely her insurance would find her a room in some hotel.   
“I have a car waiting for us.”   
“Thing is, I’m unlucky, not unintelligent. I’m not living with some stranger in an empty house in the middle of nowhere where he could kill me and cut me up into little pieces. I’ve watched true crime on Netflix, I know these things.”  
Anthea’s lips twitched in a smile. “He won’t be pleased.”  
“Why should that bother me, when I don’t know who _he_ is?”  
“I’ll pass that message on to him.” Anthea got into a car that seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, and which swiftly drove away as quietly and mysteriously as it had appeared. Molly took out her mobile and after three hours on the phone had forgot all about her.   
It wasn’t until Mina was serving dessert for the four of them after dinner the next day that Molly remembered.   
“Oh, there was a woman there too, very quiet and mysterious like some femme fatale, she gave me a letter, from this man who claims he lives at Musgrave Hall. He wants me to be his “distinguished guest” or something. I turned it down.”  
“Quite right too. The last thing you need is another creep in your life.”  
“You sure you should be serving that?”   
“What’s that supposed to mean?”  
Molly inwardly sighed. After two hours of Mina and her husband struggling to keep their tempers in check while in her presence, being murdered and diced up in a blender didn’t seem so bad. 

  
A few days later, there was a knock at her office door.  
“Come in.”  
Anthea entered, and silently handed her a thick file. A CBS check was paperclipped to the top.   
“My-croft Holmes?” Molly flipped through the file. “Stupid question, but is he related to Sherlock Holmes, the internet detective?”  
“The very same. They’re brothers.”  
“Sherlock never said he had a brother.” Something turned over in Molly’s stomach. She frowned. “Hang on. Someone’s covered up the ‘Occupation’ section in black Tippex.”  
Anthea smirked. “That means it’s redacted.”  
Molly suppressed a smirk of her own as her brain suddenly flooded with images of what jobs might be so crazy or embarrassing that a man would try to hide them from a prospective housemate.   
“Is he a… spy?”  
(That was the politest of the speculations her imagination had just supplied her with.)  
“He occupies a minor position in Her Majesty’s Government.”  
“So minor that I’m not allowed to know?”  
“Yes.”  
  


Molly bit her lip. There was a photograph of this Mycroft Holmes in the file. He wasn’t smiling, but that wasn’t his fault- it was a passport photo, probably. His gaze was cold and frank, even in a photograph. It made her feel slightly nervous to look at it too long. He didn’t look like his brother at first, but then she noticed subtle similarities between their faces. She racked her brains to recall what she knew of Musgrave Hall. She had only ever seen it through a car window from the road as her dad drove them past, on days out when she was little. Most families with stately piles did not have piles of cash to match, and had to donate their properties to the National Trust, but Musgrave Hall was never open for visitors, her father had told her. She had never dreamed that she would ever step inside.   
Molly wondered why this man, who clearly wasn’t the hosting type, made her an invitation. Was it because she was Sherlock’s friend? If that was so, why had he never made contact with her before this grand gesture, or tried to introduce himself? And why would he care about Sherlock’s friends if he clearly wasn’t close enough to Sherlock for Sherlock to ever mention him? Sherlock had made no offer of hosting Molly, though probably because he knew that Molly would try to clean up his kitchen-lab. Molly decided to maybe entertain the idea of accepting Mycroft’s offer.  
“Musgrave Hall… my office…”  
“The car would drop you off at the clinic at your usual time.” Now that her hands were free of paper, Anthea was typing on her Blackberry. “Mr Holmes also works in the city.”  
Perhaps it could work out. If Mycroft was a gentleman, she’d have beautiful surroundings, and a free lift to work. If Mycroft was an arse, well, his house was clearly big enough for them to avoid each other. The ruder he was, the less guilty she’d feel about eating his food and using his wifi. If he changed his mind; that would still leave enough time for Mina to throw out her husband before Molly came back.   
Molly decided to send Sherlock a quick text, just to make sure.

_A man called Mycroft Holmes claims he’s your brother and he’s invited me to stay at his house. Safe?_  
She only had to wait a few seconds before a reply pinged.  
 _There’s a moderate to severe risk of him boring you to death. SH._

“Tell Mycroft Holmes I accept his offer. But I’ll need to go shopping for clothes and soap and stuff first.”  
“No need. Your new clothes are at the house already.”  
“My cat-“  
“Is on his way to the house now.”  
“Huh.”

  
At the exact second she shut up the clinic, a sleek black car was waiting for her. The driver opened the door as she walked down the drive.  
“Excuse me, is this car for me?”  
“I’m to take you to Musgrave Hall.”  
Well, now her choice would be put to the test. Molly slipped inside the car.

  
The journey to Musgrave Hall was shorter than she expected or remembered, but she almost laughed when the house came into view and she realised it looked exactly as she remembered it. From the red brick chimneys grafted onto the ancient stones, the long windows, the rounded archways leading in and out of the gardens, nothing had changed. It was comforting, given how many priceless mementoes of her family and her childhood had just gone up in smoke; that this little memory of her youth was still there.   
The door opened a few paces ahead of her, although by the time she crossed the heavy stone threshold whoever opened it had gone.

  
“Welcome to my humble abode,” Mycroft called down from the top of the broad dark staircase (of course he did). “I hope everything is to your satisfaction.”

_My house burned down, I’m not picky_ she nearly retorted. In such an unusual and unfamiliar environment, she decided to be amused by it rather than intimidated. “I shall show you to your room.”  
“I could always sleep in the basement,” she joked, just to see the look of alarm cross his haughty face.   
“I assure you, the bedrooms are much finer.”   
Once she had climbed the staircase, he turned and walked down a long narrow hallway, not bothering to check whether she was following him. 

“I won’t bore you with tales of my ancestors,” he announced as they passed oil portraits so fine the figures were almost luminous.   
“Bore away, I love a good story. Were they terribly scandalous?”  
“Not at all. They were all eminent ladies and gentlemen, they simply had moral….oversights.”  
“Next you’ll tell me: ‘The west wing is forbidden!’”  
Mycroft blinked at her slowly. “There’s nothing wrong with the west wing.”  
Fortunately, Molly was spared the looming awkwardness by their arrival at her new room.   
“Dinner is served at eight. Breakfast is at seven thirty each morning, except on Sunday, when it is at eight. Cold meat and fresh fruit will be packed each morning, unless you would prefer to leave your office for lunch. In the event of a change of schedule, there is a key to the front door in the top drawer of your dressing table. Your cat will need some time to grow accustomed to this house, so it would be best for him to stay in the kitchen. You may host… gentlemen callers, overnight, but only two places are ever laid in this house for dinner.”  
Molly nodded. “Is there anywhere in the house I may not go?”  
Mycroft smiled proudly. “I assure you, I have served Her Majesty for long enough not to leave sensitive information within reach of my guests. I shall leave you to your refreshment.”

Molly sat down on the bed. She felt as if she had fallen into an alternate universe belonging to a grander, bolder version of herself. At first she felt more like a sightseer than a guest, perched on the sofa like she was balancing on a gymnastics beam. Her new clothes were folded into the chest of drawers, soft and perfect. Mycroft hadn’t said anything about a dress code, but there were evening dresses in the wardrobe and no signs of any tracksuits. The luscious perfume she had sampled on her window-shopping trips was now on the dressing table, as was the exact shade of her favourite lipstick which she could have sworn had been discontinued. Lining the shelves of the glass fronted bookcase were copies of old favourites, as well as the new books she had been meaning to get before disaster struck. Despite the thick carpets and dark wood there was a freshness in the air, like a breeze in the stillness. She could look forward to coming back to this room.

Since Mycroft had not forbidden her from exploring, a trip was in order once she had reunited with Toby in the kitchen and showered him with kisses. Toby purring in her arms, she slipped through the halls like a wandering ghost, the child in her finally having her questions answered, and the woman finding herself with more questions. In the basement were several heavy metal doors with glowing red lights and shining round buttons and what looked like a nuclear bunker, but that was not of interest to Molly. There were three rooms in the attic that were padlocked shut and silent as death. The doors were cream with bone white squares where posters must have hung for years before they were pulled down. A family tree fell out of an old book at the bottom of a pile, torn down the middle, horizontal lines leading only to the crumbling seam.   
Molly rushed back to her room to dress for dinner, taking a wrong turning that left her with only minutes to prepare. Brushing cat hairs off her shirt, she changed into a light patterned dress. Mycroft looked as if his definition of casual was a suit without a pocket square, but she deemed it better to dress simply and smartly rather than formally, at least for the first evening.

  
Mycroft looked appreciative at her choice, and they ate in relaxed silence. Molly was bursting with questions by now, but Mycroft did not look like a man who would give straightforward answers even under intense interrogation, so she packed her curiosity away. 

  
Strangely, the quietness of the house kept her awake for most of the night. No traffic, no drunken revellers, no door slamming. A childish part of her head seemed to be stirring, wondering who or what else might be living in the house, replaying in vivid detail the ghost stories she had not read or watched in years. It was chilly, and Molly was grateful that Mycroft had supplied her with a warm soft dressing gown. The warm freshness of her bed helped her to drop off eventually, and she was well-rested enough to return to work in good spirits. 

  
The next few days she was more of a lodger than a guest. Mycroft, grey eminence that he is, does not always keep the most sociable hours. More than once in her first month she found him taking a nap on the sofa in the library after lunch. He was never at breakfast, though always at dinner. They ate mostly in silence until Molly joked one night, as slim slices of lemon drizzle cake were served, that she was eating him out of house and home. Mycroft replied warmly that it was pleasant to have another person in the house, and after that she began to forget that she was a guest, and that she had only recently come to live there.

  
One Saturday as she walked along the corridor she heard a pounding sound. The door was ajar, so Molly tiptoed past and poked her head around the doorframe before she could stop to realise what a bad idea it was- if the source of the sound was what she first thought it was. Mycroft was running on a treadmill, clad in form-fitting black leggings and cycling jersey. His back still to her, he stopped the treadmill and gave a little jump off it, and began to stretch his long legs and slender torso. He was about to pick up a dumbbell but then seemed to change his mind for some reason. It was not until the moment that she closed her eyes that night that the thought came to her, making them flit open again, that Mycroft knew she was watching him the whole time. The next day, Mycroft invited her to a game of croquet in the garden, on account of the always unexpected and always welcome sunshine. She wore a sleeveless dress, and just so happened to forget to stroke suncream up her arms and neck until he was watching. 

  
Molly knows she falls in love easily, and she also knows that men have seldom been what she had hoped they would be. She decided to treat herself to a harmless crush, a pleasant distraction from the paperwork of insurance and purchasing new furniture and kitchenware. She knew she didn’t know his secrets, but she decided to enjoy her host’s more endearing eccentricities. She had never imagined living in such a place with such a man, but then she had never imagined her house would burn down and leave her with nothing but her cat, her handbag’s contents and the clothes she was weeping in. 

  
She found herself telling Mycroft things she had never told anyone before, over dinner, over port, over Operation. He had the same talent as Sherlock had for deduction (in fact Molly did not doubt that he had been Sherlock’s tutor in the art of observation), yet it was not until her visit was coming to an end that she began to wonder. 

_He knows things about my life that he couldn’t possibly know from my appearance_ she thought. _After all, almost everything I own now is new._ She found herself remembering the day of the fire. _He was very quick to offer to help. He might have known what was happening before I did._ She tried to remember the morning of the day. _I switched off the toaster. I switched off the oven. Everything was off and unplugged._ There was nothing wrong with the wiring and besides, if it was something she had left on, wouldn’t the fire have happened in the morning, not the end of the day?

She could hardly ask him upfront, so she kept the conversation light and teasing until after dinner. Mycroft was relaxed and in good spirits, and reacted with warm surprise when she sat next to him on the sofa, instead of her usual chair. When the port was drunk and the fire was soft, Molly took a deep breath and leaned against Mycroft’s chest. Slowly, he placed his arms around her. 

  
“You know who burned my house down.”

  
She could feel him tense under her.

  
“Yes.”

“That’s why you invited me here, isn’t it?”

  
“Yes.”

  
She looked up into his face. She expected him to let go, to push her away, but he did not. 

  
Mycroft sighed. “Sherlock and I…are not our parents’ only children. We have a younger sister, Eurus, more brilliant than the both of us, who has become obsessed with Sherlock and everyone close to him. I never expected she would go so far as to burn down your house, but she has debts to settle against our family and those we love. Our parents were stumbling in the dark. They did not intend harm to her, but they were… less than just. I did not protect her as I should have, I thought only of Sherlock. I accept my portion of the blame.”

  
Molly listened in silence. If she were younger she would feel afraid, out of her depth, but only a calmness now remained.

  
“That’s why you funded my clinic, isn’t it?”

  
“Yes.” He paused, still holding her. “Molly…”

  
“It was my home, Mycroft. It’s gone. Not even you have the power to bring it back.”

  
“I will keep you safe, Molly. We will find her.”

  
“And when you do?” His arms tightened around her. “I don’t know how I can help her, Mycroft.”

  
They looked into each other’s eyes until Molly felt as if her own were burning. 

  
The car came to take Molly to her new home on the next Sunday. The search for a house beyond Eurus’ reach had proved a challenge, but an airy flat had been found for her; and Mycroft was confident that Eurus herself would be found soon too, although he did not deny that a confrontation was coming between the siblings. 

  
“Thank you for your generosity, Mycroft.” Molly placed Toby’s carrier on the backseat of the car. 

  
“Molly-“ Mycroft said, and she turned back. “Was there ever a place or a time for us?”

  
She leaned forward and kissed him on the lips. 

  
“Until we meet again, Mr Holmes.”  
“Until we meet again, Miss Hooper.” 

**Author's Note:**

> A little rushed, and it kind of took on a life of its own (...don't all my stories...) but I think now’s the time for some escapism. I’ve tried to keep the location ambiguous (because Show!Musgrave Hall doesn’t look anywhere near London) and I haven’t described the house much so that your imagination can fill in the gaps to make Musgrave Hall as old/extravagant/gothic/big as you like.


End file.
